Document production environments, such as networked or non-networked print shops, convert printing orders, such as print jobs, into finished printed material. A print shop may process print jobs using resources such as printers, cutters, collators and other similar equipment. Typically, resources in print shops are organized such that when a print job arrives from a customer at a particular print shop, the print job can be processed by performing one or more production functions. Print shops and devices within such shops may communicate with one another by way of a network.
Networked rendering devices, such as, printers, can interact with an assemblage of other rendering devices, client devices, servers, and other components that are connected to and communicate over a network in the context of such print shop production environments. Networked rendering devices can be communicatively linked with a client device, for example, in order to provide various operations such as, for example, printing, inserting, finishing and other operations within the network. The networked rendering devices can be generally adapted to render high volumes of documents (e.g., a rendering job) with a special finishing feature such as, for example, a binding feature and a formatting feature.
A job definition format (JDF) and/or a job management format (JMF) are used to define the rendering job along with one or more component/piece specifications such as, for example, special inserts, fold-outs, pockets, tabs, and colored stock with respect to the rendering device. Such component specifications can be employed to understand production cost with respect to the rendering document and to improve the efficiency of the document production process. A text-based system can be conventionally employed for discerning the component specifications with respect to the rendering devices. The component specifications can be typically represented as a textual description of a job assembly process and/or represented as a visual icon of the pages with respect to the rendering job. Such conventional approaches are however unable to explicitly provide a virtual three-dimensional (3D) rendering alert with respect to the completed rendering job.
A virtual three-dimensional rendering system can be employed to generate a virtual rendering alert with respect to a completed rendering job within the network. The component specifications can be represented as an iconic representation such as, for example, ‘printer spread’ and/or ‘reader spread’ view so that a thumbnail page image can be moved or sorted. FIG. 1 illustrates, for example, a GUI illustrating a prior art JDF editor 100 with respect to a virtual three-dimensional rendering system. As indicated in the example shown in FIG. 1, the JDF editor 100 can upload a rendering job, and specify one or more features with respect to the rendering job and then navigate the rendering job to observe specified features in the rendering job. Such an approach, while advantageous in some situations, still requires additional software application to view the rendering job with respect to the rendering device (e.g., printer, etc.).
FIG. 2 illustrates a perspective view of a physical product model (PM) 150 with respect to the rendering job. The physical product model 150 generally includes one or more sections such as, for example, portrait modes 160 and 180 and a landscape mode 170. The job editor 100 creates one or more “page sections” with respect to the sections 160, 180 and 170 in the product model 150 that are represented as different “Input Resource Components” 110 in the JDF editor 100. Such “page sections” may cause a page exception during an assembly process. The sections 160, 170 and 180 can further create different “blocks” within the virtual rendering system. Prior art approaches are unable to identify and present such page exceptions and blocks in the rendering device. They are currently presented as ‘page spreads’ or ‘printer spreads’, or even as textual descriptions within the job definition. Additionally, such virtual rendering systems are unable to visually represent additional information in order to highlight the media differences and/or special inserts with respect to the media aspects of the rendering job.
Based on the foregoing, it is believed that a need exists for an improved document production visualization (DPV) method and system. A need also exists for an improved method for providing a virtual (3D) rendering alert with respect to a rendering job page exception, as described in greater detail herein.